Section 1: Comprehensive Planning Process
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Philipstown Comprehensive Plan 2006 CHAPTER 1 / BACKGROUND Section 1: Comprehensive Planning Process This Comprehensive Plan is the product of a five-year process in which the residents of Philipstown came together to agree upon a common vision for their future, and the Comprehensive Plan Special Board shaped that vision into this action-oriented document. Over the five years, numerous meetings and two public hearings were held, giving residents many opportunities to offer and respond to ideas and suggestions. This Plan is the culmination of a significant effort by many citizens of Philipstown working together to express who we are and what we want for our future. Although a professional planning consultant provided assistance, this Plan was written by the community and for the community. The process began when the Town Board commissioned a "diagnostic" planning study of the Town by planning consultant Joel Russell. That study, completed in October, 2000, reviewed the 1991 Town Master Plan, and recommended that the Town prepare a more citizen-based comprehensive plan which would be concise and readable, "a new planning document that clearly expresses a set of shared goals and principles." The first step in developing this plan was a town-wide forum bringing a cross-section of the community together to define consensus goals and action strategies to accomplish them. This forum, Philipstown 2020, was held over two and a half days in April, 2001. More than two hundred residents participated. "Philipstown 2020: A Synthesis" (see Appendix A) expresses the outcome of this forum, and its goals were the starting point for preparing this Plan. Those goals have been refined and changed as the community process has evolved. In September 2001 the Town Board appointed the Comprehensive Plan Special Board (CPSB), and charged it with preparing this Plan. The CPSB formed work groups that gathered information and data on five main subjects featured in the goals of Philipstown 2020: business and economic development, housing, infrastructure, natural resources and open space, and recreation. The findings of the work groups are in the appendix to this plan. Throughout the information gathering portion of this work the CPSB made regular presentations to the Town Board and the public. The CPSB, with guidance from Mr. Russell, next developed ten goals and related strategies (Chapter 2) building upon both the shared goals of the 2020 Forum and the information gathered by the work groups. These were presented in two subsequent public workshops to receive feedback from the community. Mr. Russell then advised the CPSB on specific actions to achieve the goals and strategies. These implementation recommendations were based upon input from citizens at the various meetings and workshops that had been held. The recommendations became the basis for Chapter 3, “Implementation,” which addresses regulatory and non-regulatory measures for both the Town and other agencies to achieve the goals in Chapter 2. Chapter 1 of the Plan, “Background,” which includes history and current conditions in town, was written entirely by CPSB volunteers; it lays a foundation for the ten goals. The CPSB held a public hearing on a draft of the Plan in March 2004, during which residents and organi- zations submitted many constructive and detailed comments; some changes and additions were made to the Plan as a result of this input. The revised proposed Plan was then submitted to the Town Board for their review. The Town Board is responsible for adopting the Plan, and held its own public hearing on this proposed Plan in January of 2005. The Planning Board also reviewed the Plan and submitted comments in three letters submitted between October 2004 and March 2005. The Town Board has considered all of this extensive input, provided over a five-year period, and has determined that this Comprehensive Plan should guide the Town over the next 20 years, with reconsideration every five years along the way. 1 Philipstown Comprehensive Plan 2006 CHAPTER 1 / BACKGROUND Section 2: Brief History of Philipstown As Philipstown plans for the future, patterns from the past several centuries are both interesting and instructive. 17th – 18th Century What is now Philipstown was originally acquired from the Wappinger Indians in 1691 by two Dutch traders; six years later Adolphus Philipse, a wealthy merchant, purchased what became known as the Philipse Patent. The Philipses leased sections of their holdings to tenant farmers who cleared what land could be farmed, especially along the Indian trail that became the Albany Post Road, building miles of walls from the stones dug out of their fields, and establishing mills and small economic enterprises. A few of the houses they built are scattered around the town. Among those early settlers were the Hustis, Mandeville, Garrison and Nelson families whose names are familiar here to this day. Beverly Robinson, who married into the Philipse family, was the first Philipse to actually live in the area. His home was in Garrison along what is now Route 9D, and in 1770 he was the founding warden of St. Philip’s Church. The American Revolution divided loyalties among the settlers and farmers. The Philipse heirs supported the King and, as a consequence, most of them lost title to their lands. However, to this day, mineral rights to most Philipstown properties are held by the descendants of the Philipse family. Philipstown’s role in the American Revolution was important but not spectacular: the great chain across the Hudson terminated at Constitution Island; Benedict Arnold fled from here; George Washington passed through from time to time. Troops were garrisoned in Continental Village, while the North and South Redoubts in Garrison were reconnaissance outposts from which enemy moves could be spied upon, and signal fires burned to muster the tenant farmers to arms. As part of Fortress West Point, the massive chain was installed in the spring of 1778; this chain and the forts and redoubts on both sides of the Hudson successfully deterred British attempts to split the rebelling colonies along the Hudson River corridor. Benedict Arnold, one of American history’s most notorious traitors, was headquartered in Garrison at the Beverly Robinson house when he contracted with the British to deliver the fortification plans of West Point, which he commanded. When he learned that his treason was about to be discovered by General Washington, Arnold fled downriver to British protection in New York City. After the war, some of the North Highlands’ tenants bought their lands at auction from New York State and continued to improve services in their small communities. Farming this rough terrain did not produce much surplus. Timbering, however, did. Wood from Highlands forests, shipped down the Hudson, was in great demand in New York City. With the building of the Philipstown Pike in 1815 (now State Route 301), farm produce from as far away as the Connecticut border was shipped to the Hudson for export with Cold Spring as the transfer point. 19th Century Industry and transportation brought about significant changes in Philipstown in the 19th century. The West Point Foundry just south of the Village of Cold Spring began operating in 1817, making use of the abundant natural resources in the area –– iron ore, timber, and the Hudson River. The factory owners, the foremost of whom was Gouveneur Kemble, smuggled skilled Irish foundry workers out of Britain; they in turn trained apprentices to make everything from simple pig iron fireplace grates to complicated wrought iron machines. New York City water pipes are still those made at the Foundry to replace the wooden ones of earlier times. From the outset, however, the West Point Foundry was primarily a gun factory; through the engineering skills of Robert Parrott, a West Point graduate, cannon design improved over the years. (The mountains across the Hudson were used for target practice.) During the Civil War the federal government’s demands for Parrott guns pushed production at Cold Spring to the limit, employing 1,400 workers at its peak. 2 Philipstown Comprehensive Plan 2006 CHAPTER 1 / BACKGROUND The foundry’s success allowed its owners to enjoy the pleasures of a refined, bucolic culture, captured in Thomas Rossiter’s painting, “Pic-Nic on the Hudson”" on display at the Butterfield Memorial Library in Cold Spring. Although most of the Hudson River School’s romantic painters managed to ignore the smoke and grime rising from the foundry, John Ferguson Weir, in “The Gun Foundry,” now hanging in the Foundry School Museum at the Putnam County Historical Society in Cold Spring, realistically depicted the rigor of the casting process. Little remains of the Foundry and the surrounding settlement: there are a few workers’ cottages on Main Street and Kemble Avenue in Cold Spring; a shell of the Administration Building remains on the site itself (now owned by Scenic Hudson); the Foundry School Museum in Cold Spring houses memorabilia from that era. The Chapel of Our Lady, however, still overlooks the Hudson as it did in 1833 when it was built to serve the Irish Catholic foundry workers. Transportation, both ferry service and the railroad, helped shape Garrison. Since the early days of the 18th century Garrison Landing had been an important river crossing and rendezvous point for sloops and boatmen. Harry Garrison, a descendent of Gerret Gerretson for whom the hamlet and landing are named, established the first chartered ferry in 1821; it was a horse-powered scow. This was replaced by a steam ferry, after the railroad was completed through Garrison in 1849. An assortment of ferries followed until the completion of the Bear Mountain Bridge in 1924. The extension of the railroad to Garrison allowed a new prominent business class to have country homes within commuting distance of New York City.